


Now I See You

by midnightwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other, UA, Universe Alterations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightwrites/pseuds/midnightwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The imaginary friend Sam's been seeing since he was a little boy turns out to be not so imaginary after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now I See You

            “It’s the man that stands over my bed, Dean,” Sam said, his voice holding a matter-of-fact tone. Dean just crinkled his nose and rolled his eyes, going back to playing with his Godzilla toy.

            “No one stands over your bed, fart-head. It’s just your ‘magination,” he stated. His little brother could be so silly sometimes. Sam used a plump hand to brush a few stray strands of hair out of his face.

            “You sure Dean? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure he’s real,” Sam said, concerned. Dean sighed and nodded before he turned to face his little brother. He carefully peeled Sam’s hand off the Transformer he had in his hand and brought it around to Godzilla so they could battle.

            “Hey-“ Sam began to protest, but Dean interrupted him.

            “Yes, I’m sure, Sammy,” Dean said. “Ev’rybody your age has imaginary friends,” he assured. Sam shrugged and picked up a hot-wheel car to play with, now that Dean had the Transformer.

 

-

 

            A few days later, Sam couldn’t fall asleep. He tossed in his bed, feeling the sheets tangle around his legs. He flipped over once again and was faced with his ‘imaginary friend’s’ legs. His eyes climbed the man until he reached his face. The man held a finger to his lips, silent instructions for him to stay silent.

            “Okay,” Sam whispered, closing his eyes tight. Moments later, John rounded the corner, peeking his head into Sam and Dean’s motel room. Sam tried to keep as still as possible, evening out his breathing until John had left the room. He looked back up at his friend, who smiled and nodded before leaving the room and disappearing from Sam’s line of sight. He fell asleep shortly after that.

 

-

 

            Years had passed and Sam stopped seeing his imaginary friend, just like Dean said he would. He supposed that everyone had one and grew out of it, not really bothering to dwell on it any longer.

            When he turned seventeen, he received acceptance letters from Stanford and left the motel room to go on a walk to clear his head. Unfortunately for him, he’d left the letter on the bedside table, and when he came home, Dean was sitting with his back to the door, his head hanging in between his shoulders. Sam approached him cautiously.

            “Dean?” he asked, “what’s wrong, man?” he reached out a tentative hand to touch Dean’s shoulder, but his older brother stood, swiftly moving out of Sam’s range.

            “Were you ever going to tell me about this?” Dean shouted. Sam gaped at his brother, about to question Dean’s sanity when he saw the papers in his brother’s hand.

            “W-Where did you get those?” Sam stuttered out. He could feel his hands begin to tremble.

            “You left them on the bedside table, Sam,” Dean snipped back.

            The argument had lasted for hours, and had only worsened when their father had gotten home. It ended with Sam packing his things, Dean standing off to the side, begging Sam with a silent look to stay, while John shouted at his youngest son. Sam just pushed passed his father and trekked out the door, leaving his family behind.

 

-

 

            Dean had called a few times after that, but had given up when Sam refused to answer the phone. He was hunting on his own now, and his brother had been gone for four years now. He’d just be finishing up school.

 

-

 

            Sam scored high on his exit exams, high enough to earn him a full ride to the school of his choice. After getting a full ride to Stanford in the first place, he would be confident in saying that his hard work in high school had paid off tremendously. His girlfriend, Jessica, told him that she was proud, and Sam kissed her deeply, losing himself in her affection.

            They left the bar and headed home, ready to unwind and let the day seep from their pores as they slept. Sam was glad to be back home from his first hunt in years, and was ready to curl up next to his girlfriend. Listening to the shower run, he laid back on his bed, closing his eyes to think about the days ahead of him. He thought he might buy a ring, ask Jess to marry him and settle down. Have a few kids and maybe get a dog. Just the happy life he’d always wanted.

            His calm thoughts were interrupted when he felt something splatter against his forehead. He thought maybe his ceiling was leaking again, because it had happened in the past before, but another drop told him that this substance was too warm and too thick to be water. He peeled his eyes open to sight of Jessica pinned up to the ceiling, her abdomen bleeding profusely. Sam cried her name once before Dean burst through the door, dragging Sam out of the room before it was engulf in flames. Sam never made it to law school.

            The last thing Sam remembered seeing, as he sat on the hood of the Impala while Dean tossed their things into the trunk, was the faint outline of a man standing amongst the flames of his apartment. The dark figure turned his head and faced in Sam’s direction before bringing a hand up to what Sam assumed to be the forms mouth, silently shushing the boy before he disappeared into the flame.

            Sam dismissed it as a play of the light, drowsiness, and stress. He never mentioned it to Dean.

 

-

 

            He’d never really thought that his life could get any more complicated than it had been before, but he was proved violently wrong approximately six months after Jess’s death. He woke with a striking headache, one that gnashed its teeth through his temples, tearing away at his frontal lobe as it went. He sat up and groaned; his right hand immediately going to his forehead while his left tore the blankets from his legs. He swung his legs over, his feet making contact with the floor, a dull thud echoing through the motel room.

            “Sammy? _Sammy!”_

 

-

 

            Sam and Dean didn’t know what had caused Sam’s hellacious headaches, and from what they could tell, nothing would remedy it. All Sam could do was wait for the pain to pass, clenching his eyes shut tight, grunting and groaning through the lightning bolts that splotched his vision and cut off his ability to think.

            He ran into a handful of people that dealt with the same thing, losing a two on the way. However, he’d also made a new group of… not so much friends, but acquaintances at the least. He would spare a thought or two for those he’d run into during the span of the few months he’d been on the road with his brother.

            Those acquaintances would be reunited sooner than Sam had ever expected- or hoped, for that matter. He’d simply been getting pie for his older brother, not thirty yards away from the Impala parked out front, when he was engulfed in black smoke, the substance wrapping itself around Sam and taking him to a place unknown.

 

-

 

            He awoke some time later, his back caked in wet mud, his head spinning. He picked himself up off the ground and brushed himself off, deciding to scope his surroundings. He was walking along an abandoned salon’s porch when he heard shuffling from the alleyway perpendicular to him. He grabbed a waterlogged piece of wood from the ground and was about to swing when a familiar face breached the corner.

            “Andy?”

            The boy looked up, stunned, and gaped for a moment before he spoke. “Sam?”

            “What are you doing here?”

            “I don’t know, man, but I’m freaking out!”

            Between the two of them, Sam and Andy could find no logical reason as to why they had both ended up in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. They decided that it would be safest to stick together and continued to explore their surroundings. By the end of the day they had found three others in the ghost town, all of them the same age, all of them containing a special, golden ticket.

            Ava had premonitions, as did Sam. Andy could project thoughts into the minds of others where as Jake had strength beyond normal human capabilities. Lily could kill with a touch to bare skin.

            The five of them bunkered down together once Sam had convinced them that it really was the best option for them to stay put. All it took to persuade them was a demon nearly dismembering Jake. They all worked on gathering supplies until one of them went missing.

            Lily was found, hanged from the water tower, fifteen minutes after their search for her had begun. She had always been defiant to the idea of staying in place like Sam had recommended. Jake volunteered to get her down. The remaining four didn’t leave their safe house for just anything after that.

            It wasn’t until Sam had mistakenly fallen asleep during one of the group’s watches that someone greeted him. The man had beckoned Sam outside, engaging in a single-sided conversation with the boy. Sam watched with stunned curiosity as the man in front of him babbled on about a number of things. For the nth time, Sam had the creeping feeling that he’d seen this man before. He couldn’t exactly put a name to the face, but it was a face he knew nonetheless.

            “Why are we all here?” Sam demanded once the man had stopped talking. He simply raised an eyebrow.

            “Sammy,” he droned, a think smile slipping it’s way onto his face. “Fine. I’m in a generous mood,” he said, expanding his arms. “I’ll show ya.” With a snap of his fingers, Sam and the mystery man were standing in a room.

            Baby blues and soft colours lined the room, a small moon clock that hung on the wall ticked away. Sam’s brow furrowed in confusion as he watched the scene in front of him play out.

            A dark figure stood over the crib of a six-month-old baby, and calmly dug a nail into the soft skin of his wrist. Into the mouth of the baby, drop after drop of thick, reddish-black blood dropped, and the baby began to whimper and cry. From the doorway came a female voice, calling for a John, asking if all was well. The dark figure only held a finger to his lips and shushed the woman silently.

            It was at that moment that Sam made the connection- the man at the foot of his bed when he was younger, the shadow that had silenced him before his father came in to check on the boys, the figure that he’d seen in the window of his apartment during the fire that blazed away his last memories with Jess… this was that man.

            Sam turned to him with violent intentions, only to be awoken by Jake and Andy. Ava had gone missing….

 

-

 

            Endless torment seemed to follow Sam wherever he went. Despite all of his effort to do the right thing, the universe refused to loosen its leash of pain that it had tightly wrapped around Sam’s neck. Shortly after Ava was found, Andy was killed. Ava’s life was brought to a swift end by the trained hands of Jake, and Jake brought Sam’s life to an end with a near-surgical cut to Sam’s spinal chord.

            The twenty-four-year-old boy died in the arms of his brother, who was only moments too late to save his little brother’s life.

 

-

 

            Dean Winchester sat in an old, abandoned house in the southern most part of South Dakota. He had gone days without eating, and his personal hygiene wasn’t faring much better. He sat still and stared at his brother’s dead body with a pain that soaked down to his bones- a pain that slowly ate away at his soul like the black plague and England, and crippled his mind into a near state of nothingness. Sometimes Dean would talk to Sam, carrying a one-sided conversation with himself and the cold corpse of his younger brother.

            After four days and the suggestion of burial by an old friend, Dean got in his car and drove thirty-two miles until he found a suitable, and rather secluded, crossroad. He dropped haphazardly to his knees and dug a shallow hole, burying very specific items in a crude, four-by-four inch wooden box. He stood and waited.

 

-

 

            By the time Dean had returned to the run-down house in the southern most parts of South Dakota, Sam was standing in front of a mirror, inspecting the large scar on his back. Dean captured his brother in a rib-breaking hug, tears threatening to spill over the reservoirs of his eyelids.

            Sam had questions, of course, and Dean did all he could to avoid the truth. Demon deals were nasty business, after all. Bobby had been furious, but Dean begged him not to tell Sam- not just yet. They’d deal with it after they’d dealt with the demon on their hands.

 

-

 

            The figure that had haunted Sam since he was a young boy had finally earned a name: Yellow Eyes. The demon was the strongest the boys and Bobby had ever run into before, and the only solution any of them had was to kill the beast with the only thing any of them had. It was a gun that Sam and Dean’s father had left for them before he died, a gun that could kill any supernatural creature. The Colt.

            They hunted Yellow Eyes down, finding him at a church ground in the center of Wyoming. He had coerced Jake into opening the devil’s gates, letting hundreds of demons free to walk the earth while simultaneously breaking the thick iron train tracks that protected the Hell’s Gates. Demons were free to skirmish across the globe, and Yellow Eyes was able to get to the Hell Gates.

            Luckily for the boys, Sam held a grudge, and but three bullets in Jake’s skull, unknowingly returning the gift Jake had given to him not too long ago. Whilst the apparition of their late father distracted Dean, Sam unloaded the Colt, sending it’s last bullet into the skull of the demon that had shadowed Sam from birth.

            The gun’s drum connected with the cartridge, sending the bullet sailing through the air to embed itself with a sickening squelch into the most important part of the demon’s head. Spellwork ran its course as Yellow Eyes seized up, the bullet in his brain immobilizing him. He shuddered and then jerked before he fell to his knees, his mouth agape, the once bright yellow fading out to a pale beige color.

 

-

 

            Satisfaction could not begin to describe how Sam felt at that moment. The terror of his child and the ghost of an uneasy past that had reared its ugly head later in his life had finally been smeared from the face of the earth. He heard Dean call out to him and quickly turned to face his brother

            “Can we get out of here, please?” Dean groaned, wiping the blood of a newly formed cut off of his forehead. Sam spared one last glance at the body quickly succumbing to rigor mortis before he trained his attention back on Dean.

            “Yeah. Let’s go,” he said stiffly. He never looked back at the body on the floor.

 

            After all, everyone has to say goodbye to their imaginary friend eventually….

**Author's Note:**

> This was based off of a Tumblr post by bonnetbeerbowlegsbrother. All ideas are credited to Puddy.


End file.
